


Be Useful

by discountsatanism



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: 'badly written and confusing' bad not 'kinky and weird' bad let me clarify, Don't Examine This Too Closely, Gen, This Is STUPID, but it is pretty bad, finn is the best amiright, he has never done a single thing wrong in his entire life, i have no idea how stormtrooper names work, this is not the worst thing in this fandom, this isn't the most incoherent thing i've written in my life but it comes close
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-17
Updated: 2016-06-17
Packaged: 2018-07-15 13:40:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7224652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/discountsatanism/pseuds/discountsatanism
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When he was seven, FN-2187 learned to be useful. When he was 26, Finn learned he didn't have to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Be Useful

**Author's Note:**

> Obligatory 'this is my first fanfic I have written since I was ten years old and it's probably worse than the last thing you read but I REALLY LIKE FINN OKAY and I want to die knowing I've written at least one totally Finn-centric thing' warning. Warnings for vaguely described violence and extreme flip-flopping of morals in the space of fifteen seconds, but, you know, that's how brains work when everything they know is questioned.

The first time FN-2187 saw that the First Order wasn’t the pinnacle of effeciency he’d learned it was, he was seven, and eating lunch.  
A fight broke out. FN-2360 and FN-2184 could’ve been practicing combat maneuvers, or they could’ve just been energetic and young and stupid. Maybe a few of those. Maybe all of them.  
The fight lasted about three minutes, and ended with an official coming into the room and yelling at them. FN-2187 had covered his ears until the official went away, looking down into his grey, watery ration until he looked up, and both FN-2360 and FN-2184 were gone.  
“Reconditioning,” FM-2188 whispered to him when they were eating lunch a week later. “They might come back. They might not.” FM-2188 was a year older than him, and an inch taller.  
“Why not?” FN-2187 asked.  
“It depends on whether or not their fight is ruled to be useful to their training.”  
FN-2187 had thought on this. “So I have to be useful, or I won’t come back?”  
FM-2188 had shrugged. Nodded. “About right.”  
That day, FN-2187 decided to be useful.  
He worked as hard as he could in training, never asked questions, and made sure his helmet was always polished and he never talked out of turn. He was rewarded with a clean record and the watchful eye of Phasma, the captain.  
 _Why doesn’t Phasma have a number?_ he’d wondered, but questions weren’t useful, and so he made sure that he never asked it to anyone. He never answered it either, because if he came up with an answer he might be wrong, and last week FS-1290 had been sent to reconditioning for a wrong answer.  
When he was 26, FN-2187’s years of being useful finally accumulated into a message in the cafeteria and his number on a list. He was being sent to Jakku.  
FN-2187 polished his helmet, and reminded himself to _be useful_.  
When the ship opened, and the order came to kill everyone in the village, FN-2187 told himself be useful, be useful.  
He saw a colleague fall, and ran to help. _Be useful, be useful_. Phasma hated it when stormtroopers were needlessly wasted, and if he could just help them to a place where they could recover. . .  
He leaned over the prone stormtrooper, and was about to speak, when a bloody hand dragged over his polished helmet, and then dropped.  
FN-2187 stopped. He looked down at the helmet and saw that there was a crack in it, and saw a face. A dead face- he’d seen enough diagrams to tell.  
A dead face.  
He stopped. That’s what FM-2188 had meant when they said “might not come back”. Death was what happened to insubordinates, to people who weren’t useful.  
Death was what was supposed to happen to the village, because they _weren’t useful._  
But as FN-2187 looked down at the face of an actual dead person, he suddenly found himself breathing quickly, gulping in air, and realized that he didn’t know why this stormtrooper had died. _Weren’t they being useful? How could they have not been useful if they were on the battlefield? Why did they die, even when they were being useful?_  
 _Why wasn’t the village useful?_  
FN-2187 slumped. _Be useful_ echoed in his brain, softly.  
How?  
He couldn’t. He couldn’t kill someone, because here he was looking at someone who’d just died, and he didn’t know why, and for the first time in his life, FN-2187 didn’t know if he could be useful.  
_Be useful_ , his mind told him again. He had to be. He had to be useful or he would die, just like the stormtrooper laying prone in the rocks.  
So he stumbled up and walked over to the stormtroopers that were still standing, and he pointed his blaster at the villagers.  
He looked for an easy target, and started to pull the trigger, when his hand froze up.  
He couldn’t. He had just seen death, and he didn’t know why, but he couldn’t be useful.  
He couldn’t add another dead body. So he stood there, listening to the screams, and telling himself to try, one last time to _be useful._  
He looked up, and saw Lord Ren.  
Looking right at him.  
FN-2187 held his blaster steady, but was nearly shaking. Lord Ren could see that he wasn’t being useful. He would die. But he still couldn’t.  
He shoke and shoke until the blaster actually was shaking, but Lord Ren eventually walked away.  
When the ship loaded back up, minus one stormtrooper(FN-2187 could still see their face, and he wondered if he had been useful, somehow, and that’s why he wasn’t dead) and plus one hostage.  
FN-2187 arrived back on Starkiller with a shaken aura and a bloody helmet, and got as far as twelve meters from the landing and a few into the hallway before ripping off his helmet. He could feel sweat on his face.  
When Phasma’s voice came from behind him, his eyes flashed and he was sure he’d be killed then and there, because no matter what his confused brain was telling him, if Phasma was talking to him after he’d failed(he wasn’t sure. Was he useful? Was he not? He didn’t know what useful was any more, and it scared him), and when he heard _reconditioning_  his world crashed down around him, whatever parts that had been fruitlessly hanging on before now strewn somewhere around his stomach and burning.  
So when he passed the room where the hostage was being held and heard the word _pilot_ , he had an idea.  
If he couldn’t be useful to the First Order, he would die.  
_Unless. . ._  
He could run. Take a TIE fighter and run to the end of the galaxy and go far, far away where it wouldn’t matter if he was useful or not.  
So he did. He took the pilot he’d later learn was called Poe Dameron, and found himself in a TIE fighter with a new name and a strange feeling.  
He was sitting there, operating a gun he’d practiced maybe five times before, shooting at Starkiller itself, and laughing, when his mind gave him a push.  
_Be useful_ , it reminded him. He’d spent years drilling the thought in, and now. . .  
Now he shoved it out. A part of being useful was adapting to new situations, as he’d been told when he learned why the First Order didn’t use clones anymore.  
So as he flew the TIE fighter away from the only home he’d ever known, FN-2187, now known as _Finn,_ resolved to stop worrying about being useful.


End file.
